Learning ESL literacy among Indo‐Canadian women

This paper reports findings from an action research project which set up a part‐time instructional programme for a small number of Punjabi‐speaking women immigrants to Canada then traced their uses of literacy and English in classroom and home settings over six months of instruction then four months later. Analyses of classroom and interview data indicate that participants' efforts to teach and acquire literacy in a second language focused on five aspects of knowledge: language code; self‐control strategies and schematic representations for reading and writing; personal knowledge; social knowledge; and social experience. A major dilemma for instruction was to create learning tasks to address all five aspects of literacy coherently and holistically while providing sufficient guidance and practice in each aspect of literacy to foster appropriate consolidation of knowledge. Long‐ term impacts of language and literacy acquisition on the women's lives appeared as more frequent reading for information in English, interactions with their children's schools, telephone communications, formulaic writing, and use of their local library and public health unit. The women's accuracy in certain morphemes and control over English syntax increased slightly in their writing.